I hear a lot of predictions about the future of mobile user interface (not surprising: it’s my field). One that always hits me wrong is the prediction that “everything” will move away from the 12-key input pad to voice activation. This tag line, from Vlingo’s website, promotes that assumption (also not surprising: it’s their field): “Why tap when you can talk?”

SMS, the world’s most popular communication means by far (see below) embodies the polar opposite interface: everything is contained in layers within 12 keys.

SpinVox stakes a claim right in between Vlingo and SMS: they offer voice-to-text translation of voicemail messages and personal notes. The best of both worlds, so to speak; a combination of voice and text usage. SpinVox claims that it’s seven times faster to speak than to type. I don’t know what kind of tests that’s based on, but let’s accept it as true.

The real question we have to ask is, What do people prefer?

This semester, T-Mobile is tapping graduate students at the Illinois Institute of Technology’s Institute of Design for research insights. To investigate how people use their mobile devices, the students are staking out their local Starbucks and asking subjects to document their phone usage with digital cameras.

The project, which will last until May and could shape future mobile plans and phones, has already spawned one insight: Young people prefer text messaging to voicemail because it’s more direct. “It’s about how we deal with information … such a rich field for designers to explore,” says Associate Professor Vijay Kumar, who heads the workshop.

(from Innovative Cellphones, Forbes.com, March 19, 2008)

First major fact: No one input means is perfect for every use case. Forget what every input technology company website tells you.

Second major fact: 350 billion voicemail messages are left globally per year. (source: SpinVox presentation at MEX) I couldn’t find any numbers on the number of voice calls completed globally, but I expect it’s less than…

Third major fact: 2.8 trillion SMS text messages are projected to be sent this year. (source: Tomi Ahonen consulting) I’ll hang on a second while you go back and re-read that last statistic. Yep, 2.8 trillion.

Personally, it’s hard to me to imagine a case where I’d use voice activation of anything, with the possible exception of in a car. I’d hate it in the car, but might use voice control to keep my hands on the steering wheel. Even that’s a stretch. But let’s leave me out of it.

People do prefer text to voice in many situations. Why? Why tap when you can talk? Let me count the ways…

• Cost. SMS is usually cheaper per message than cellular calls are per minute.
• Privacy/Discretion. Often, you don’t want to be heard by your neighbors (eg, in a meeting). Or — sorry to break the news — they don’t want to hear you (eg, in a movie theater).
• Perceived time. I don’t know what the reality is, but people may consider texting (or emailing from a computer) to be less time consuming than talking by phone. Why? Partly because no time is spent on courtesy chit-chat; partly because time spent entering text isn’t registered the same way that time spent listening to other people talk is registered; partly, perhaps, it is an illusion.
• Insecurity. Call screening used to be considered anti-social and arrogant. Now it’s a normal part of life. But calling a mobile phone implies near-certainty that the other party will hear the call come in. What if the other party rejects your call? Even if the reason is a good one — he’s in a meeting, in the bathroom, sleeping, watching a movie, has his hands full — the sense is still that “something else” was more important than talking to me. Sending a text message alleviates the need to experience that little subconscious emotional tension while the phone rings. You send the message; the other party will respond within a reasonable amount of time (or won’t).
• Avoidance of intimacy. Having a vocalized conversation encourages a level of personal connection that isn’t necessary in a test message. There’s a protocol of “how are you?” and “how’s your Mom?” and “thanks for the update; I’ll get back to you.” People are often lazy, selfish, or not interested enough to invest that kind of energy when “im 10 mis l8″ will convey the required message.

• Burden of attention. Slightly different from the previous issue of the energy demands of intimacy, this has more to do with attention and focus. SMS allows you to interact as much as you want to, for as long as you want to, when you want to. You can limit your attention. In a conversation, you need to be “on”, to listen, to provide feedback — in other words, it takes attention.

If you are watching TV or reading emails or playing your PSP while the other person is talking, they will notice and be offended. In an SMS or IM exchange, you can only pay attention when you’re the one talking (and doesn’t that make for the most interesting conversations?). No feigning interest required. In that sense, SMS is the ultimate self-centered communication medium.

In fact, you might consider micro-blogging (eg, Twitter, Facebook status), which combines broadcasting with SMS, to be the truly ultimate environments for self-centered communication. That might explain their popularity.

And with this, I think I have a reasonable answer to the question: Why tap when you can talk?

Nuance (the makers of T9 predictive text) just opened a one-month beta of T9 Nav. What can I say? Run, don’t walk, to sign up. I was converted with the first keypress.

What does T9 Nav do? It gives you instant search access to everything in your phone. You use the number pad to enter letters as you would with text messaging, and T9 Nav searches your phone on the fly for anything that matches.

For example, SARAH = 7-2-7-2-4. If I press just 7, I get a long list of 99+ items. When I press 2, there are still 99+. At the next 7, though, it’s down to 54, and by the time I reach the last number, 4, there are only four items to choose from. The application searches contacts, calendar and to do items, bookmarks, music and more. You can click directly on a search result item to access or open it. Stunning. Just stunning.

1. T9 Nav is really, really easy to use.

2. It doesn’t interfere with dialing, it just takes place above the dial input field.

3. Results are lightning fast, even instantaneous, and complete. A far cry from the native Nokia search, which only searches — slowly — by first name/last name OR company name (depending on how the content appears). I’ve got it loaded on a Nokia E65, by the way.

Thank you Marek of PMN for sending the link, and thank you to the great guys at Nuance for totally disrupting the mobile user interface. I doubt that I’ll ever directly access my contact list again.

Awesome stuff, friends.

I’m finally getting down to organizing my notes and thoughts from the MEX Conference held last month in London.

Here are some of my favorite quotes:

“The user says, ‘It’s broken’ not ‘I’m suffering from a fragmented ecosystem’.” — Jo Rabin, MobileMonday London

“Most people don’t want to buy a 1/4″ drill, they want a 1/4″ hole.” – Scott Jensen, Google

“Cognitive simplicity” — Steve Ives, Taptu

“Neutral vs. Imperial” — JD Moore, Nokia

“‘Chaos’ is not chaotic to non-Western eyes. ‘Chaos’ is shared space.” – Paul Adams, Google

“The environment is the interface.” — Kieran del Pasqua, Intel

iPhone: “The interface is the device.” — Robert Weideman, Nuance

“The device is the analog-to-digital converter of life.” — Robert Weideman, Nuance

“‘Device talking to us’ doesn’t always work as well as ‘us talking to device’.” — comment during a Breakout Session on design use cases for the handset outside the hand.*

“Fragmentation is the result of innovation.” — Carl Taylor, Hutchison Whampoa Europe

“It is seven times quicker to read than to listen. It is seven times quicker to say it than to type it.” — Simon Crowfoot, SpinVox

“…’Point and Shoot’ as a UI design philosophy.” – Simon Crowfoot, SpinVox

*If you’re the one who said this, please let me know so that I may credit you!

I recently ran a little tiny usability test, with myself as the subject.

The background:

For a year or two I’ve griped about missing calls on my cell phone — it’s in my purse… it’s on my desk in the other room… the convention was so noisy… — and I’m not the only one. Somewhere I read that up to 80% of women complain of missing calls on their mobile phones.

I keep saying that I need a good-looking accessory that will give me a window into the basic phone information on my mobile phone: incoming call alert (with customizable profiles, including ring volume, vibrate and LED), caller ID, and missed calls/message alerts.

The Competition:

The MEX User Experience Design Competition seemed like a great place to submit the design concept for the product, currently going under the name “My Link” (My Link PDF). I figured that at the very least, it would be the right forum to air the user need, especially since I can’t justify diverting Power2B’s attention to a project outside its R&D focus. I was delighted when the My Link Wireless Phone Accessory entry was short-listed for the award in the Professional category; even more delighted when it won.

The Test:

The MEX competition stimulated me to think more about the missed call issue. So I intermarried a Bluetooth headset with an iPod Shuffle, brought them back to the lab to void the warranties, and created a functioning My Link mock-up. The mock-up doesn’t have all the features that matter for the intended use, but it does two critical things: it clips to my clothing, and it gives an audible alert to incoming calls.

The Findings:

At a cafe with my husband, I was struck by a feeling comparable to the first time I left my newborn with a babysitter: a slow buildup of “vigilance anxiety” (subliminal habitual listening for the baby’s cry), followed by an eruption into consciousness (”Omigosh, is the baby OK?”) and a relief (”Oh, right, she’s not with me”). Then a slow return to vigilant state.

The My Link equivalent ran: subconciously listening out for the phone to ring -> sudden consciousness (”Did I just miss a call? I haven’t hear the phone for a while”) -> “Oh, the My Link would have beeped if the phone had rung”. Lather, rinse, repeat.

This led me to realize that there are two categories of problems with missing calls:

• frustration and dilemmas caused by not receiving information/communication in a timely manner

• anxiety and behaviors relating to fear of not receiving information/communication in a timely manner

My personal and unscientific estimation is that the missing calls problem is comprised of 15% of the former, and 85% of the latter.

I also observed the following auxiliary hassles that stem from anxiety about missing calls (no, I don’t exhibit all of these behaviors personally!):

• obsessively checking the phone’s status to see if a call is missed (worst with older clamshell models that don’t have an external display)

• hearing phantom rings

• dumping a purse upside down to find the phone before the call is diverted to voicemail

• family members calling 5 times in a row

• placing the phone on the table / countertop / dashboard in order to monitor it

• family members calling many times in a row “in case you didn’t hear”

• inappropriate ring volume when the profile was changed for outdoor use, and the owner forgot to change back to an indoor profile afterward (also a problem vice-versa)

Thanks to the staff, sponsors, judges and participants in the MEX design competition for the positive interest, and for the opportunity to develop the My Link concept. I would love to see this get taken up and manufactured soon.

My Link PDF

I’m delighted to share the news that the My Link Wireless Phone Accessory product design concept has been short-listed for the 2008 MEX Mobile User Experience Awards in the Professional category! Awards will be announced on May 27 in London.

In any case, I believe that I’ve achieved my goal of getting the idea planted out there, and hopefully that will help to bring it to actualization sooner rather than later. Thanks for your votes! (or, “thank you in advance” — you know who you are!)

Another reference to the MEX article.

An informed post on Google Phone’s Android Community blog, summarizing my MEX article, published earlier this week. (Android is Google’s recently announced new open-source platform).

[Note that Power2B is a technology company, not an interface design company. We study interface needs and future trends, and then innovate to enable those dreams to become reality.]

“As the many thousands of people who have Google as their homepage already know, search can be as simple as a box on a page.  Mobile search, however, requires something of a paradigm shift; no matter how glossy the UI, tactile the interface or clever the design, emulating desktop search on a cellphone is a frustrating, scroll-heavy experience.  Sarah…, of interface design company Power2B, discusses the demands for a semantically-linked, three-dimensional mobile search environment in an article for MEX today, resolving in what she calls “mesh connectivity vs. linearity” — where search navigation is guided one step at a time through a series of clarifying options.”

You can find a presentation of my thoughts on using patterns in nature to inform interaction models in today’s issue of the MEX Newsletter (the PDF version is posted here). Many thanks to Marek Pawlowski of PMN for the invitation to contribute to MEX’s ongoing user experience education. Preliminary work on this theme was first presented at MobileMonday Helsinki in June 2007.

Sarah is co-founder and director of research and development at Power2B. In this special article for the MEX newsletter ‘Search Patterns in Nature: Informing Computer Search Interfaces’, she discusses how natural phenomena provide a blueprint for a more efficient mobile search mechanism. The technique utilises an ‘always forward’ methodology, combining semantic information with a new method of presenting and navigating results to reduce cognitive load and help users reach their desired result more quickly.